There is no country likely to receive more benefit from your labours than Spain; for, on the one hand, the mortality among children from the Smallpox has always been very great; and, on the other hand, the inoculation for the Cowpox has been received with the same enthusiasm here as in the rest of Europe; though I am sorry to add that the inoculation of the spurious sort has proved fatal to many children at Seville, who have fallen victims to the Smallpox after they had been pronounced secure from that disease.[253]
There were philosophising doctors in Madrid who did not see why cowpox should possess a singular efficacy, and induced the King, in 1804, to order that all the children in the foundling hospital should be inoculated with goatpox. They did not, perhaps, know that Jenner had inoculated his son with swinepox, and that the child underwent the variolous test on several occasions with impunity.
The great event in connection with Spain was the expedition of Dr. Francis Xavier Balmis, physician to his Catholic Majesty. He obtained a concession to introduce vaccination to the colonies in America and Asia, and to defray expenses by freely trading in merchandise. He sailed from Corunna, 30th November, 1803, with twenty-two children for the propagation of virus. The Canary Islands were first visited, then Porto Rico, and at Caracas the party divided, Don Francis Salvani proceeding to Peru and Chili, whilst Balmis attended to Cuba and Mexico, crossing the Pacific to the Philippines with twenty-six children to maintain the succession of the virus, and proceeding from thence to Macao and Canton. Having circumnavigated the globe as vaccinator and trader, Balmis re-appeared in Madrid with great éclat, and kissed the King’s hand on 7th September, 1806. Philanthropy and business were successfully combined, for as Moore, writing in 1817, observes—
Nearly three years were nobly spent by this excellent man in putting a Vaccine Girdle round the globe; and it is an additional pleasure to learn that by trading during his circumnavigation, he acquired an easy fortune. He now enjoys at Madrid the distinction he has merited, and patronises the diffusion of Vaccination through the Peninsula.[254]
The expedition of Balmis naturally excited much attention, and its progress and results were described in terms of inflated rhetoric. Thus, we read in Baron’s Life of Jenner—
The conductors of the expedition were everywhere welcomed with the utmost enthusiasm. It was to be expected that the representatives of the Spanish Monarch, and all the constituted authorities, would gladly co-operate; but it was scarcely to be anticipated that the unenlightened minds of the Indians would so soon appreciate the value of the mission. It is, nevertheless, most gratifying to know that the numerous hordes which occupy the immense tract of country between the United States and the Spanish colonies all received the precious fluid with the utmost readiness. They acquired the art of vaccinating, and soon performed the operation with great dexterity.
Thus not only the Spanish Americans were brought under the dominion of cowpox, but the Indians, yea, all the Indians; and not reluctantly, but joyfully, and became experts in the practice of the rite! Baron continues—
Fame had preceded the arrival of Salvani at Santa Fé. On approaching the capital, he was met by the Viceroy, the Archbishop, and all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The event was celebrated with religious pomp and ceremonies; and in a short time more than fifty thousand persons were vaccinated. Similar honours awaited the expedition throughout its whole course. At Quito they were greeted with boundless joy and festivity. Such expressions well became them. The people of Colombia, the Indians more especially, having been often scourged by the horrid ravages of Smallpox, regarded it as the most terrible affliction which Heaven could send them. On its first appearance in a village, a panic seized every heart; each family prepared an isolated hovel, to which those who were supposed to be infected were banished. There, without succour, without remedy, and with a very insufficient supply of food, they were exposed to the alternations of a very variable climate, and left to their fate. In this way whole generations perished. Under Viceroy Toledo the population of the native Indians had amounted to 7,500,000; but at the time of the Balmis expedition, the number was supposed to be reduced to one-fifth—that is 1,500,000.[255]
Indian and savage statistics in connection with smallpox and vaccination are usually little else than exercises in imaginative desire—less what is true than what is wished to be true, or to be taken for true. We know the difficulty of vaccinating populations dwelling within defined limits and under highly organised governments, and we can therefore estimate the claims made for Balmis and his partners as roving traders and quacks in the territories occupied by Spaniards and Indians. Yet it was with yards of mythical rubbish of this sort that English vaccinators tried to divert the attention of their countrymen from the failures of vaccination within their own experience; and when worried with ever-recurring disasters at home, it was in turning to Mexico and Peru that Jenner professed to find consolation.